Does Islam enslave women?
The supposed enslavement of women in Islam was a titillating theme in France from the earliest days of the 19th century. The Odalisque was a genre of paintings in which a slave was depicted in the harem surrounded by exotic items from the Orient: luxurious carpets, braziers of burning incense, tropical foliage, and Islamic architecture. These nude or mostly nude women were depicted in languid poses, showing their vulnerability to ostensible Arab sexual depredation. This concern for the status of Arab women did not extend to all women of color within France: slavery was not abolished until 1848. This contradiction between the practice of French slavery in the Caribbean and French colonial adventures to rescue Muslim women from slavery by Arabs is not remarked upon by Dr. Bertherand, Parent-Duchatelet, or the artists for whom the Odalisque was an important genre.
The lithograph of Ingres' Odalisque held by Oberlin's Allen Memorial Museum of art references one of his most notorious paintings, La Grande Odalisque, of 1814. Among other criticisms were the anatomical impossibility of the figure's pose, one recent interpretation of which suggests:
The deformation may have been introduced for psychological reasons. By placing the harem woman's head further away from her pelvis the artist may have been marking the gulf between her thoughts (expressed by her aloof, resigned look) and her social role (symbolized by her deliberately lengthened pelvis). [6]
This psychological attributions, whether Ingres' own or his 21st century interlocutors, are part of a longstanding stereotype of the prostitute in the West: she is vulnerable, salacious, and psychologically damaged. [7]
The nude vulnerability of another of Ingres' Odalisques was highlighted by the anonymous feminist art group Guerrilla Girls in 1989. This bus poster reproduced Igres' Odalisque and Slave, replacing her head with the group's signature gorilla mask: "the bus company canceled our lease, saying that the image, based on Ingres' famous Odalisque, was too suggestive and that the figure appeared to have more than a fan in her hand" [8]. Here again, the odalisque's servility is highlighted as a goad to action on the part of the viewer, but this time to highlight the plight of women as producers of culture, rather than as objects of cultural concern.
[6] Maigne, Jean-Yves, Gilles Chatellier, and Hélène Norlöff. 2004. "Extra vertebrae in Ingres' La Grande Odalisque. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Vol. 97:7, pp. 342-344.
[7] Alexander, Pricilla. 1987. "Prostitution: A Difficult Issue for Feminists," in Sex Work: Writings by Women in the Sex Industry, Pricilla Alexander and Francoise Delacoste, eds. Pittsburgh: Cleis.
[8] Guerrilla Girls. 1995. "How Women Get Maximum Exposure in Art Museums." http://www.guerrillagirls.com, accessed March 31, 2016.